


Cloak and Dagger

by savvygui



Category: FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)
Genre: Headcanon, Multi, OH LORD, Science Fiction, So much headcanon, Space Flight, Space Opera, Spaceships, generic scifi, like kinda star trekky, stealing ideas from mass effect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-22 06:16:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16592417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvygui/pseuds/savvygui
Summary: Sam Paris has no combat experience, no leadership experience, a rag-tag crew, an entire Rebel fleet on his tail, the weight of the Federation on his shoulders, a prototype stealth cruiser, and an infinite gulf of space between him and the Flagship.(A narrative retelling of an FTL: Captain's Edition Infinite playthrough. Everything is based on real, randomly generated events! Except the smut parts of course!)





	1. One Final Effort

An explosion rocked the hidden Federation hangar, and Sam Paris was afraid for all the usual reasons.

He was terrified of being captured by the rebels, terrified of getting shot, terrified of being sucked into the vacuum of space. Terrified of dying.

All around him, Federation troops–– friends and countrymen–– shoaled like fish, shouting orders and performing final pre-flight checks on the countless spacecraft that still had yet to launch and meet the Rebels on the field of battle. Here and there, Sam caught someone he knew; the Engi from the dorm three rooms down, the Rockman who liked to stand against the wall of the mess hall. All now with grim determination on their faces, weapons in their hands, fire in their eyes. He hated that he was afraid, suddenly.

That hate took hold and he shook his head, remembering what he was supposed to be doing. He set off in the direction of the back of the hangar, weaving through the chaos as best he could.

The back of the hangar was a restricted zone that had been sealed by a massive bulkhead for as long as Sam had been stationed there. He’d never seen anyone enter or leave, and hadn’t really believed that anyone ever did.

Until, one day, he’d been pulled out of a routine exercise. Not by an officer, by a suit.

He’d asked the suit’s name, but the man had just laughed. “You’re smart,” he chuckled, “you should know that I can’t tell you.”

The suit had led him down a maze of corridors, doubling back and twisting and turning to throw off any tail that they might have grown. They went down and down, stopping on decks that Sam had never seen before, slipping through side passages and maintenance tunnels before they reached the end. They stepped past a set of steely elevator doors and felt themselves rise a little as the doors gently shut and the cage flew down. The suit had turned to him then, and said, “We need your help.”

Sam had blinked. “Me?”

“Your sim scores are perfect,” the suit continued. “You have no combat experience but every officer supervising you says you’re a natural leader. You’re dedicated to the Federation.”

He blinked again, silent.

“I’ve vetted you personally out of dozens of hundreds of thousands of others. You’re the best I can manage. I’m taking a chance on you, but I truly believe that you’re the best.”

In the present, Sam dodged the wing of a rapidly-ascending fighter as he replayed the memory of the suit in his head. He remembered asking the suit something inane, to which he replied:

“This is for the future of all of us and the future of the Federation.”

Sam hadn’t liked the gravity the man had put behind that statement.

The elevator doors had opened then, revealing a simple, darkened meeting room with a long metal table and eight chairs around it. Two suits like the one to Sam’s side flanked a third man, who turned and fixed him in place with his one good eye.

Chief Admiral Callahan Beck. The supreme commander of all the Federation’s military.

Sam had felt his mouth run rapidly dry as he met Beck’s gaze. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. In contrast, the admiral–– conspicuously without medals adorning his dress uniform–– simply watched impassively as the two other suits explained the nature of Sam’s mission to him.

When they finished, the admiral had said one thing: “You are the needle. Strike well.”

A suit had handed him a blank white card as he left the room, which he now squeezed between his fingers as he stumbled through the hangar.

The trip back up with the suit was silent.

Two more explosions knocked Sam out of his reverie and nearly knocked him to the floor. The door at the end of the hangar was in front of him, with few ships and even fewer personnel around. To Sam, the front of the hangar and the battle there felt almost dreamlike, impressionistic and nonexistent. This was a space removed from it all.

He knew it wouldn’t last. He pulled the blank card from his flight-suit pocket and slid it into a reader off to the side of the hangar door. The massive bulkhead slid open with only the tiniest rush of pneumatic air, and behind it was the most beautiful ship he’d ever laid eyes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just getting out of the hangar alive under Rebel assault. Not actually in the game yet, so this is sort of a prelude to what's to come.


	2. Crosseyed and Painless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The captain is dead. Long live the captain.

The ship looked nothing like any other Federation craft he’d seen before. Instead of the usual blocky, utilitarian shapes, white-orange paint, and powerful engines, the ship was built like a knife.

From the tapered tips of its wings to the blunt cockpit, the craft was covered in black graphene panels with only the barest hint of blue accent. Three massive engines were built into the ship’s superstructure; a single, powerful nozzle at the tail end and a pair of gray afterburners that spanned nearly half the width of the ship promising sheer speed and neck-breaking maneuverability. A pair of weapons were half-recessed into the ship’s front end–– a snub-nosed scatter laser and a deadly-looking hull laser.

“Soldier!” came a voice from across the bay. “Are you authorized to be here?”

Sam turned to face the voice, snapping to attention as soon as he saw who it belonged to. A tall, clean-cut man in a blue uniform, the chevrons on his chest ranking him as captain. Sam’s captain, An-Kor Park.

“Sir, I have been assigned to pilot this ship, sir,” Sam replied.

The captain looked him over. “Hmm. You’re that ace that they told me about, huh? Lieutenant Paris?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“They say your sim scores are the best. Let’s hope they translate to the real world.”

Sam said nothing.

“Get on board, lieutenant. We’ve got to get out of this hangar as fast as––”

The captain was cut off by a resounding explosion almost directly above them, then Sam felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the air filled with the scent of ozone. He ducked for cover as the telltale whickering sound of a teleporter reached his ears, and a full squad of Rebel marines phased into existence in a flash of yellow light.

Plasma bolts whipped past him as he drew his sidearm, adrenaline taking over. If those marines got on board the ship, the mission would fail before it even began.

Sam breathed hard, steeling himself, before popping out of cover and taking a single shot at the advancing orange-armored squad. The bolt of energy hit one in the head, and he dropped like a stone to the floor.

 _Huh_ , Sam thought as he dropped back into cover.

Suddenly, Sam heard the whine of servos as one of the weapon pods on the ship began rotating. The lights on the side of the stubby scatter laser glowed green, and the Rebels scattered for cover. Two blasts of dispersed energy later and the fleeing marines were vaporized.

Sam sprinted for the ship as fast as he could, knowing that there were more Rebels where that came from. Another explosion rocked the hangar, almost to underline the thought.

He was nearly to the ramp when he felt a hand grab at his leg. He went for his sidearm again, but stopped as the hand’s owner coughed wretchedly.

“Lieutenant,” the captain groaned, dark blood streaming from his mouth. “Wait. They didn’t tell you everything. They didn’t tell you how the mission ends.”

Sam knelt down next to Park, trying to ignore the fist-sized hole in his stomach.

“They told you about the Flagship; they told you about how it needs to be destroyed for us to win. But they didn’t tell you about this.”

He reached a shaking arm out and dropped a tiny something into Sam’s palm. “When you get to the Flagship––” he was cut off by a fit of coughing–– “transmit this. It’s the only way we can win.”

Sam looked at the object–– a marble? He opened his mouth to ask Park what the object was for, but the captain simply stared up at the ceiling, glassy-eyed.

Sam pocketed the marble and stepped up the boarding ramp, which retracted behind him. He caught a brief glimpse of two faces–– a dark-skinned woman and an oddly pink-looking man–– on his way to the helm, but this wasn’t a time for a meet-and-greet. He simply said, shakily: “Captain Park is dead. I’m in command. Get to your stations.”

The two crewmembers saluted unsteadily and took their positions. Sam dropped himself into the helmsman’s chair and immediately began flicking switches, activating the ship in a ritual of muscle memory. He could see his crew on a floor-plan readout of the ship–– the woman at the engines and the man calibrating weapons–– and sent a quick message over the intercom: “Prepare for launch.”

The ship’s powerful engines roared, spitting blue fire, and Sam felt the craft lift itself off of the hangar floor as its landing gear retracted. The hangar door ahead of them slid open fully, revealing the rest of the hangar ahead.

Even fewer ships remained unlaunched, and the ceiling lights flickered unsteadily as the station was rocked by even more explosions. Through the cockpit window, Sam could see the battle raging ahead, orange Rebel battleships trading lance fire with pale Federation cruisers as fighters danced around them.

Suddenly, the energy gate holding the hangar’s atmosphere in flickered and died. Sam fought the controls as the hangar depressurized, battling a tide of debris as it was sucked into the void ahead. Even a few heavy fighters began to slide towards the exit, squealing against the metal floor.

Sam grit his teeth and punched the throttle, bracing against G-forces as the ship accelerated, engines screaming. Crates and wiring and loose panels thumped against the hull as they floated ahead of them, and the lights flickered and died as the station lost power completely.

A half-disassembled bomber loomed ahead of them, and Sam wrenched the stick to the side, just barely missing the hulk and scraping a wingtip on the hangar’s ceiling. An instant later, they were flying free, out past the disabled energy gate and into the fire.

In an instant, the ship’s computer registered dozens of “target lock” indicators–– lasers, missiles, anti-ship batteries–– and he slammed his hand down on the ship’s secret weapon. An alarm rang out as the projectiles screamed by. They were cloaked, invisible to both sensors and the naked eye, at least for the time being. Sam sighed in relief. At least the suits had had the presence of mind to explain  _that_ to him.

He opened up a comm channel to the engineering room. “How long until the FTL is charged?” he yelled, dipping under the blind eye and massive hull of a Rebel corvette.

“We’re ready,” came the woman’s reply.

“Punch it!”

The ship rocked as the FTL discharged, sending them rocketing away from the battle and into something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the end of the prologue. Next chapter will be a bit of character-building as they take a breather.


	3. Milky Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stage fright.

The ship dropped out of FTL after a minute or so of travel, and Sam immediately checked his sensor readout. Nothing. Just an uninhabited rocky planet, a tiny sun the distance, and the empty void surrounding the jump beacon. 

He let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding and began to shake as the adrenaline wore off. What had he gotten himself into? Command over an experimental cruiser that the Rebels would kill thousands to get and a marble that they’d kill millions more for? He sank into his seat as the gravity of it all crashed into him.

“Captain?” A voice at the helm’s door shook him out of an impending existential crisis and he turned, rising quickly out of the seat. Standing there were his two crewmembers, looking just as lost as he.

On the left was the engineer woman, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. She was stocky and short–– more than a head shorter than Sam–– with dark eyes that looked at him flatly, judging him without a hint of concealment. She wore a drab olive technician’s uniform with the suspenders down, a simple white undershirt showing dark skin.

To the right stood the man, who had nothing near the dry confidence of the woman. The first thing Sam noticed was his almost bubblegum-pink skin. Sure enough, the man was pink all the way through–– pink hair, pink eyes, pink freckles dotting his nose–– and he turned his head, slightly embarrassed at Sam’s staring.

He realized that he was probably supposed to say something inspiring, like a real captain would. He searched, mouth working, but gave up.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here instead of the real captain,” he said. “Captain Park is dead. That squad of Rebels shot him before he could make it.” He paused, sighing a little. “I don’t want to let you down, but I’m not captain material. I outrank both of you, sure, but I’ve got no field experience, no command experience, nothing. I’m just a pilot. I’m sorry.

“I barely have any idea what I’m supposed to do here! I’m sure those agents gave you just as little info as they did me; all I got was a slideshow on the cloak and the piloting systems. That’s it! And then Park dies and hands me a marble and a cryptic message and I’m stuck here commanding you! The both of you probably have more experience than ten of me combined.”

The woman huffed. “Don’t think like that,” she said, a hint of some noble accent in her voice. “All of us were selected for this mission because we were the best the Federation could find. All of us know the stakes. All of us accepted. Our captain might not have made it, but we can’t stick ourselves in the past, trying to live up to the made-up memory of a man none of us knew.”

Sam blinked, quietly amazed.

“I think we should take a little while to breathe. Forget the fleet; let’s get to know each other,” she continued. “I’m Lia. Lia Cordean. I’ve been with the Federation Navy for fifteen years, twelve active service, and I know my way around pretty much any system you need fixed.”

She looked at the pink man, who sighed and introduced himself. “I’m Joel Madsen. I’ve got no field experience, but I’m a pretty good shot with most any weapon you can find.”

“And I’m Sam,” Sam said, scratching the back of his head, “Sam Paris. I’ve been flying ships for a long time, and the suits who gave me this mission said my sim scores were perfect, for whatever that’s worth.”

Cordean nodded. “Then we’re all introduced. Captain, you said something about a cryptic message and a… marble?”

“Yeah, before Park… um... died, he gave me this,” Sam said, holding up the tiny sphere between two fingers. “He said, ‘When you get to the Flagship, transmit this. It’s the only way we can win.’”

Cordean took the marble from him and rolled it around in her palm. “Hmm,” she grunted.

“You know what it is?”

“No idea,” she replied, handing it back to him. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m guessing it’s got something encrypted in it, though, going by what Park told you.”

“I guess I’ll keep it safe,” Sam sighed.

They stood in silence for a few seconds.

“So what now?” Madsen asked.

“You were briefed the same as us,” Cordean said. “Get to the Rebel Flagship and destroy it.”

Madsen snorted. “Destroy that thing? The prize of the Rebel fleet, the ship that makes battleships look like paper boats?”

“You were briefed the same as us,” Cordean repeated.

“I guess it didn’t hit me until now,” he mumbled. “The responsibility, I mean.” He looked out of the helm’s viewscreen into the void outside. “How are we going to do this?”

“Luck,” Sam said.


	4. New Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First contact, first blood.

They talked for a little while longer, reassuring each other of the mission ahead, before the console behind Sam dinged and he waved the other two back to their stations to prepare for FTL. That little break was all they could manage with the fleet so close behind.

Sam pushed the yellow button to send them to the next beacon, and the stars turned into streams of white light as they traveled onward.

They dewarped at what seemed to be another empty beacon, this one placed in the orbit of a nearby gas giant.

However, alarms rang out once again as the ship’s sensors registered a contact about to drop out of FTL. Sure enough, an orange-painted Rebel transport popped into reality behind them, scanned their ship, and almost immediately readied its weapons.

“Brace for evasive action!” Sam yelled, kicking the engine into full throttle. “Hostile contact at five o’clock!”

“I see him,” Madsen responded, training his sights on the small rigger craft.

So the Rebels knew who they were, despite their quick escape from the Federation hangar. Sam grimaced. He had been hoping, perhaps stupidly, that they would be able to get to the Flagship without much Rebel interference. That dream was dead already.

He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and dodged reflexively, the dark projectile speeding past the ship and into the void beyond. What was that? The Rebels’ missile launcher was inactive–– he guessed that they must be out of missiles–– and their stubby scatter laser was only half-charged.

His question was answered only seconds later when the metallic sphere activated its thrusters and spun toward the ship, a mechanical tone alerting him to the attack drone’s presence. Sam rolled, trying to shake the thing off of, but it held tight to his trajectory as its scatter laser calibrated.

“How close are we to a volley?” he yelled.

“Six seconds, tops,” Madsen answered.

Not soon enough. Sam glanced down at the console in front of him. The drone was coasting to a stop, its cannon reading green, ready to fire––

––but it viffed away, confused, as a refracting sheen trickled over the ship’s viewscreen. Sam let out a breath and took his sweaty hand off of the cloak button. He knew that an unshielded cruiser like his was easy prey for an attack drone. Cloaking was only buying him time: he had one shot to turn the battle around.

“Madsen––”

“Already on it.”

Sam watched the timer on the cloak tick down, further and further. What was Madsen thinking? They were out of time. Sam began to panic, white-knuckling the controls as he prepared to fling the ship to the side, the drone lining up its shot directly in front of him.

At the last moment, Madsen fired, the double-thump of the ship’s scatter laser turning the drone into shrapnel with one shot and stripping the Rebels’ shields with the other. Their beam weapon screamed into life the instant the azure bubble collapsed, buzzing through Sam’s skull like a migraine, shearing through the enemy’s hull like wet paper and releasing a blast of pressurized air that he could see from the helm.

Sam gaped. The only words he could manage were, “Holy shit!”

“Enemy bug has lost shields and drone control; weapons heavily damaged,” Madsen commed, clipped and neutral. “Good effect on target.”

Sam was about to say something else but was shocked awake by the impact of the enemy’s scatter laser on the hull, scoring tiny superheated gashes into the black paint. He growled and opened a comm channel to Cordean in the engine room.

“Gimme as much afterburner as you can. We’re gonna strafe ‘em.”

“Aye aye. You’ve got five seconds of redline thrust, Captain.”

The ship rumbled under him, engines chuckling throatily in anticipation, and Sam punched the throttle forward. They raced towards the damaged, ailing rigger, hull slicing through the interstellar void, weapons locked and ready.

A moment later, they flew out of an expanding cloud of orange-painted debris, their wingtips trailing fire and victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got to write an action scene. I like the idea of space battles as being dogfights with giant boats, which is the vibe FTL's always given me. Also, for those unaware, the Stealth A loadout in CE starts with a Hull Beam (basically a mini beam with bonus damage to systemless rooms) and a burst scatter laser (2-shot burst that does no system or crew damage).


	5. Lost My Treble Long Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Engineer, scrapper, wetworker.

Madsen whooped, Cordean said something encouraging and inaudible, and Sam laughed like a maniac. They had done it! They had fought and  _ won _ ! Of course, it was a fight against a tiny Rebel scout ship, but hey, baby steps, right?

Madsen and Cordean pushed open the door to the helm, the former giggling stupidly and the latter with a grin plastered all over her face.

“That flying was  _ insane _ !”

“Pfft, who gives a shit about my flying, that shot on the drone was ridiculous!”

“I couldn’t have made it without you holding steady.”

“That wasn’t me, that was her! I’ve never seen backend engine work as perfect as that, and I’ve had a computer manage that every time in the sims!”

“Heh. You flatter me. Really, though, you fly like you were born in the cockpit.”

They continued like that for a while, exchanging pleasantries and basking in the endorphin rush of victory. After a time, the conversations dwindled, boiling down to brass tacks.

“I’ve been on a few guerrilla-style missions like this before, Captain,” Cordean said. “We need to salvage what we can from that ship. Scrap is useful out here, and if we can find fuel, munitions, or any other supplies, we need all of it. Fly us closer and I’ll get started.”

Sam shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

Cordean saluted and stepped down the hall to the airlock. The kid was learning fast. Despite her initial read on him–– an upjumped, nervous boy without the confidence to lead–– he had flown like an ace and read the battle like an old soldier. Sure, his own inner steel might only come out when he’s got his hand on the throttle, but Cordean was a big believer in self-growth. She remembered an older her, years and years ago, stuck in an unfamiliar engine room with barely any idea how to put her shirt on right, let alone help fly a starship.

She chuckled softly as the door to the airlock slid open and she started donning an EVA suit. Madsen, too, had impressed her–– with marksmanship like that, they might just have a chance at completing this suicide mission. She checked the load of her laser pistol and zipped up her suit, ready.

With the suit vacuum-locked to her body and her helmet sealed, she pushed a button on the side of the wall and watched the warning light spin red above her as the room depressurized. She kicked off from the ledge into open space, angling herself towards the glittering cloud of Rebel metal, a pulse of momentum from the thrust pack on her back sending her sailing gracefully through the gap between the two ships.

She landed on the largest section of intact hull, bracing as she planted her feet on the burnt hulk. She swung herself inside, magnetized palms and boots keeping her from drifting into the void. These riggers were always a tight fit for cargo–– most of the already cramped layout usually went to drone control systems–– and this one had been no exception.

She shoved her way past the fragment of a door into the engine room, her eyes scanning the tiny space for anything of value. A few fuel cells and a container of engine parts soon found their way into her hands, and she kicked up and back to the ship to drop them off before heading down again.

Cordean kept the search economical, mindful of the time constraint, but found crates of drone components, computer parts, hull refinishings, and even a few intact packages of frozen waffles floating in the Rebel ship’s corpse. She handed them off to Madsen, who had appeared at the airlock in his own pressure-suit and was neatly stacking their loot in the cargo bay.

All that was left now was the helm. As she floated towards it, she noticed that it was still sealed shut. Odd. Usually explosive decompression was enough to vent every room in a ship into space. It wasn’t opening automatically to her presence, either, and scans didn’t show that the little rigger had a door control system.

The closed door was now giving her a very bad feeling.

She kicked off from the floor through a gaping hole in the ceiling, catching the edge and climbing froglike over to the helm’s window. Sure enough, it too was intact.

So was the Rebel officer hiding inside as he fiddled with a distress beacon.

Cordean paused, weighing her options, then pointed her pistol at the window and fired.

The man turned, stricken with fear at the sound of rapidly shattering glass, the armored window already webbed with hairline cracks from the rigger’s destruction. He grabbed at the distress beacon, hands shaking, slamming on the wall, desperate. Cordean fired into the glass, again and again and again as his mouth worked in some inaudible plea.

She considered him for a moment, then pushed off of the glass. A look of infinite relief passed over the Rebel's face.

Cordean's own face was unreadable as she took aim one last time and fired.

The glass turned into a million fragments, scything out of the newly depressurized helm in a razor-sharp storm. Cordean, out of the way of the blast of air, watched the Rebel as he was wrenched out into space, screaming soundlessly, until he was a dot in the distance.

“Salvage's done,” she commed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> character developmeeeeeent


End file.
